Bear Any Burden? The U.S. Can Afford Iraq

There's increasing buzz on Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes' new book, The Three Trillion Dollar War.

Here's a Houston Chronicle synopsis:

When U.S. troops invaded Iraq in March 2003, the Bush administration predicted that the war would be self-financing and rebuilding the nation would cost less than $2 billion.

Coming up on the five-year anniversary of the invasion, a new estimate from a Nobel laureate puts the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at more than $3 trillion.

That estimate from Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz also serves as the title of his new book, The Three Trillion Dollar War, which hit store shelves Friday.

The book, co-authored with Harvard University professor Linda Bilmes, builds on previous research published in January 2006. The two argued then and now that the cost to America of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is wildly underestimated.

When other factors are added — such as interest on debt, future borrowing for war expenses, continued military presence in Iraq and lifetime health care and counseling for veterans — they think that the wars' costs range from $5 trillion to $7 trillion.

"I think we really have learned that the long-term costs of taking care of the wounded and injured in this war and the long-term costs of rebuilding the military to its previous strength is going to far eclipse the cost of waging this war," Bilmes said in an interview.

The Chronicle article suggests the Stiglitz/Bilmes claims are controversial in Washington. The article also reviews how the administration allegedly underestimated the "social costs" of the conflict.

Stiglitz and Bilmes summarize their work in this piece from the Times of London:

The Bush Administration was wrong about the benefits of the war and it was wrong about the costs of the war. The president and his advisers expected a quick, inexpensive conflict. Instead, we have a war that is costing more than anyone could have imagined.

The cost of direct US military operations - not even including long-term costs such as taking care of wounded veterans - already exceeds the cost of the 12-year war in Vietnam and is more than double the cost of the Korean War.

And, even in the best case scenario, these costs are projected to be almost ten times the cost of the first Gulf War, almost a third more than the cost of the Vietnam War, and twice that of the First World War. The only war in our history which cost more was the Second World War, when 16.3 million U.S. troops fought in a campaign lasting four years, at a total cost (in 2007 dollars, after adjusting for inflation) of about $5 trillion (that's $5 million million, or £2.5 million million). With virtually the entire armed forces committed to fighting the Germans and Japanese, the cost per troop (in today's dollars) was less than $100,000 in 2007 dollars. By contrast, the Iraq war is costing upward of $400,000 per troop.

Most Americans have yet to feel these costs. The price in blood has been paid by our voluntary military and by hired contractors. The price in treasure has, in a sense, been financed entirely by borrowing. Taxes have not been raised to pay for it - in fact, taxes on the rich have actually fallen. Deficit spending gives the illusion that the laws of economics can be repealed, that we can have both guns and butter. But of course the laws are not repealed. The costs of the war are real even if they have been deferred, possibly to another generation.

The war is expensive, however, Stiglitz and Blimes' analysis lacks comparative and historical rigor. As Amity Shlaes argues, it's just not the case that the U.S. cannot afford to fight this war:

In their best-case scenario, under which the U.S. presence in Iraq drops to 55,000 non-combat troops by 2012, the total budgetary costs for the conflict add up to $1.7 trillion. They posit that a more realistic figure would be $2.65 trillion.

When a U.S. soldier dies, the authors write, the Pentagon pays something like $500,000 to families in insurance and death benefits. Stiglitz and Bilmes claim that a more accurate price would be $7 million -- the Pentagon fails to consider the lifetime earning and spending power lost when a soldier dies.

``Instead of paying for the war in Iraq, we could have fixed the Social Security problem for the next half-century,'' the authors say, and America would have had ``a smaller mountain of debt.''

In their best-case scenario, under which the U.S. presence in Iraq drops to 55,000 non-combat troops by 2012, the total budgetary costs for the conflict add up to $1.7 trillion. They posit that a more realistic figure would be $2.65 trillion.

When a U.S. soldier dies, the authors write, the Pentagon pays something like $500,000 to families in insurance and death benefits. Stiglitz and Bilmes claim that a more accurate price would be $7 million -- the Pentagon fails to consider the lifetime earning and spending power lost when a soldier dies.

``Instead of paying for the war in Iraq, we could have fixed the Social Security problem for the next half-century,'' the authors say, and America would have had ``a smaller mountain of debt.''

`Vast and Huge' Cost

Non-budgetary and interest costs are an important part of the Stiglitz calculation. The authors worry about the deficit. The conflict's costs, they say, ``are certain to be vast and huge and will continue for generations.''

The rebuttal to this argument starts with oil. Professor Steven J. Davis of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business challenges as ``unwarranted'' their argument that even $5-$10 of the per barrel increase is because of the war.

The 2003 drop in oil production by Iraq accounted for less than 1 percent of world production. Overall, world oil output went up from 2002 to 2006.

The authors' description of the war's cost as ``vast'' or ``huge,'' conjures images of unprecedented financial sacrifice. But by the standard method of calculating costs of wars, defense spending as a share of gross domestic product, Iraq's price is improbably modest.

Back in 1986, the year before Ronald Reagan threw out his ``tear down this wall'' challenge to Mikhail Gorbachev, defense spending was 6.2 percent of the U.S. economy, according to the Congressional Budget Office. In 1968, the year of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, it was 9.5 percent.

`Peace Dividend'

In 2005, 2006, and 2007, defense spending was about 4 percent of GDP -- as low as during the early 1990s, when the U.S. was enjoying the ``peace dividend'' after the Soviet Union's collapse.

As for the budget deficit, it is likely to range between 2 percent and 3 percent of GDP this year, a humdrum level nothing like the heroic 30 percent deficit Washington ran as it prepared for D-Day.

Yet it is the Stiglitz-Bilmes ``what-would-have-been'' argument that will prove most contentious. Back in 2006, Davis and two colleagues made their own counterfactual case, seeking to analyze the costs of the theoretical alternative to war against Iraq: containment of Saddam.

Davis found that the costs of containment in Iraq would have been big. In certain situations, they even would have been ``in the same ballpark as the likely costs of the Iraq intervention.''

Good News

In a phone request for an update of his paper this week, Davis said sending additional U.S. troops last year, the ``surge,'' increased costs enough to make the war yet more expensive -- but not by trillions of dollars.

And where in the ``Three Trillion'' calculus does the new good news fit in, such as the International Monetary Fund's prediction that Iraq's GDP will increase by 7 percent this year?

The message of this book is that the war can be blamed for America's failure to reform domestically. If this is true, then Washington would have used the period of 1991 to 2001 to rewrite Social Security and Medicare. It didn't.

Democrats and Republicans will both find the Iraq-as- budget-buster argument convenient. That doesn't make it compelling. It is also disingenuous. There are a number of reasons to oppose the war in Iraq. Just don't say we can't afford it.

Stiglitz and Bilmes' research will likely get huge play, as Shlaes suggests, but their work's not to be trusted.

Tough and Ready: How Will McCain's Defense Message Sell?

How will John McCain's beefy tough-on-defense message resonate with voters? Are hawkish credentials an asset this year?

The Wall Street Journal has an analysis:

In his victory speech Tuesday night, John McCain ticked off his muscular foreign-policy plans and then, with clenched jaw, urged the rowdy crowd to "stand up and fight for America."

The Republican presidential nominee's resolve will now be tested on a national stage. His record in Congress suggests that a McCain White House could assume a tougher posture overseas than has the current administration, which has itself often been criticized as too bellicose. Sen. McCain has joked about bombing Iran, ruled out talks with North Korea and, earlier this week, condemned the new leader of Russia....

His worldview will likely pose a contrast to his opponent, be it Illinois Sen. Barack Obama or New York Sen. Hillary Clinton. Sen. McCain and his Republican allies are preparing a campaign built around the assertion that either Democrat would be too soft. The Democratic nominee will likely portray Sen. McCain as a reckless saber-rattler....

In a recent Pew Research Center survey, 47% of respondents said they thought Sen. McCain was "tough enough" on foreign policy, compared with 39% for Sen. Obama and 44% for Sen. Clinton. One in four thought Sen. McCain was "too tough" -- compared with only 3% for Sen. Obama and 9% for Sen. Clinton.

Sen. McCain has a long record of urging the use of force during crises from North Korea to Iran. In 1994, he accused President Clinton of trying to appease North Korea over its nuclear program. "To get a mule to move, you must show it the carrot and hit it with a stick at the same time," he wrote in the Los Angeles Times.

Five years later, when the Clinton administration led a North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing campaign against then-Yugoslavia, Sen. McCain was one of the loudest voices in the Senate urging the White House to prepare for a potential ground invasion. "The credibility of America as a superpower is at stake," he said.

A decade later, during the Iraq war, U.S. credibility has again emerged as a big issue. The top Democratic contenders frequently promise to restore America's image overseas. But Randy Scheunemann, Sen. McCain's chief foreign-policy adviser, said the McCain campaign sees no similar need. "At the end of the day, people are happy to engage with Americans," he said. "They know we're the sole superpower."

Several of Mr. McCain's original advisers, including Mr. Scheunemann, fell firmly in the camp of neoconservatives, the hawkish group that encouraged President Bush to invade Iraq. But as the presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. McCain has since attracted support from nearly all of the party's foreign-policy luminaries, including staunch realists like former Secretary of State James Baker.

Sen. McCain and his aides have devised a foreign-policy strategy that recommends pushing for tougher economic sanctions on Iran -- including a possible gasoline embargo -- outside the auspices of the United Nations, a policy the Bush administration has eschewed as impractical. Sen. McCain wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine last fall that when it comes to Iran, "military action, although not the preferred option, must remain on the table."

Read the whole thing.

WSJ notes that President Ronald Reagan came to office with a similar bellicose reputation, but then mellowed while in office and achieved great success in foreign policy.

Further, McCain's toughness puts our enemies on watch not to fool around (recall Max Boot's argument as well that the terrorists fear most a McCain presidency), and a reputation for firmness may even position McCain favorably to resolve international crises, like those with Iran.

The quesion is wheter these assets will sell with the general electorate in November. I think they will.

Washington Post Survey is Poor Snapshot of Voter Preferences

Well, we're certainly seeing a trial-heat horse race in the general elections matchups.

A new Washington Post poll finds both Democratic Party hopefuls leading GOP nominee John McCain in the November election:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) kicks off his general-election campaign trailing both potential Democratic nominees in hypothetical matchups, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) leads McCain, who captured the delegates needed to claim the Republican nomination Tuesday night, by 12 percentage points among all adults in the poll; Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) holds a six-point lead over the GOP nominee. Both Democrats are buoyed by moderates and independents when going head to head with McCain and benefit from sustained negative public assessments of President Bush and the war in Iraq.

About two-thirds of Americans disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job and think the war was not worth fighting, and most hold those positions "strongly." A slim majority also doubt that the United States is making progress toward restoring civil order in Iraq, even as McCain and others extol recent successes there.

These views are closely related to voters' choices: McCain does poorly against Clinton and Obama among those who disapprove of the president and those opposing the war.

Note something funny about these results: Just last week the Los Angeles Times found McCain leading both candidates, with the Arizona Sentator holding a six-point lead over Hillary Clinton.

So here the poll's likely oversampled Democrats, or the intense coverage of the Democratic Party race heading in the Texas and Ohio primaries has created a media effect favorable to Clinton and Obama.

Morover, the survey was conducted before McCain secured the GOP nomination and President Bush's endorsement (which will alientate Democrats and rally Republicans).

So, it's just a snapshot.

As things continue to improve in Iraq, and as the Democrats continue with their long drawn-out nonination contest, the lead in public opinion will float up and down between McCain and his potential rivals.

I'm excited for the Dems to wrap up their primaries. It's going to be a very close race, even with the presumption of favorable Democratic election trends this year. McCain's going to do some heavy pounding, especially on national security and patriotic values.

See more analysis at Memeorandum, and especially the ejaculatory Daily Kos (which is attacking McCain's age, his Iraq support, and the economy as in "recession).

Discussion Question: Are the Democrats in the driver's seat heading into November?

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UPDATE: This really is a flawed poll, or at the least is just already out of date, considering developments in the presidential primaries since Tuesday.

A new, post-Texas and Ohio survey conducted by SurveyUSA finds statistical dead heats in trial-run matchups between McCain and both the Democratic hopefuls:

1,041 registered voters interviewed by SurveyUSA 03/05/08, following Clinton victories in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island on 03/04/08.

Pairing #1:

* Clinton 48%
* McCain 46%

Pairing #2:

* Obama 46%
* McCain 46%

Complete results posted here Thursday morning 03/06/08.

Also, regarding the Washington Post, check out Flopping Aces, "What A Shocking Poll!

It turns out that the Post's sample was composed of 55 percent identified or leaned Democratic (net), so it's no wonder that support for Clinton and Obama was so skewed.

As I said earlier, the race will be close, and frankly the longer the Democrats delay in selecting a nominee, the better for the GOP in terms of fundraising and voter mobilization (but see Karl Rove's qualifications of this point).

Public Opinion on Iraq Continues to Improve

As I've noted many times, public sentiment on the Iraq war continues to improve as a result of increased security in the country and the reduction in casualties.

The Wall Street Journal has a report on the public's bulked-up opinions surrounding the war, which is one of the most underreported developments of the last year:

The perception that the U.S. troop surge in Iraq has succeeded is changing some public views of the war, potentially blunting Democrats' political edge on the issue.

Americans continue to judge the nearly five-year-old U.S. invasion of Iraq as a mistake, by margins that have barely budged. But in a notable shift, public perceptions of the current U.S. military effort there "have become significantly more positive over the past several months," says a recent report from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. It shows that almost half of Americans think the war effort is going well, and that the U.S. should keep its troops there, at least for the time being. Other polls echo the trend to varying degrees.

The results suggest that -- barring another reversal in conditions -- Democrats' ability to use the war as a political weapon could be somewhat curtailed, particularly when the general-election campaign begins....

In the most in-depth picture of the trend, the Pew report says that about half the public (48%) now says the Iraq war effort is going either very well or fairly well. That compares to a more than 2-1 majority who said it was going badly a year ago. Nearly half (47%) say the U.S. should keep its troops in Iraq until the situation there has stabilized -- roughly the same as those (49%) who favor bringing troops home as soon as possible. A year ago, 53% favored rapid withdrawal versus 42% who favored keeping the troops in Iraq.

Pollsters first noticed an uptick in public perceptions of the war in the fall. But the change in February "struck me as, 'Wow,'" said Andrew Kohut, the Pew Research Center director. The U.S. troop surge during 2007 sent 30,000 additional combat troops to Iraq to help quell growing violence. The last of the surge troops are scheduled to be withdrawn this summer.

Obviously, the public hasn't done an about-face in its levels of support for the war, but as I've reported earlier, a majority of Americans now sees the U.S. likely to win in Iraq, and a large majority opposes an immediate troop withdrawal from the country.

I'll will say once again, though: We're winning this war: The administration sees it, the military sees it, the American people see it, and Iraqis themselves see it - as they increasingly renounce their own religion's fight against the historic forces of freedom.

Now if the media would just start to really see it, then we'd be getting somewhere (the antiwar left will never see it).

(Discussion Question: Should the administration and the presidential candidates talk-up success in Iraq more substantially, or would such public relations efforts create a public backlash in the case of dramatic military setbacks? On this exact point, see James Willbanks, "Winning the Battle, Losing the War," at the New York Times).

CNN is Back on Top with Primary Election Coverage

CNN's comprehensive coverage of the 2008 presidential primaries has vaulted the network back to the top of the cable news channel hierarchy:

The morning after the Democratic primary debate on Feb. 21, while both sides argued over who had come out ahead, there was one clear winner: CNN. The debate, broadcast by CNN and Univision, the Spanish-language network, drew 7.6 million viewers, one of the biggest audiences ever for a primary debate on a cable network.

The debate was held at the University of Texas, Austin, but Jim Walton, president of the CNN news group, was savoring the victory a long way off — in his 21st floor office at the Time Warner Center in New York. For Mr. Walton, the high ratings from this year’s presidential race are an indication of a broader achievement.

In his five years at the helm, Mr. Walton has taken a network beaten down from its competition with the Fox News Channel and managed to streamline top management, raise its profits and increase its audience.

“It was a combination of a lot of things,” Mr. Walton said, commenting on the low morale at the network when he took over. “CNN had gone for 15 years without competition. Profits of the company were not where they should have been. There were management changes. It was like the perfect storm.”

After a long malaise, CNN is finally getting its swagger back. In the last four years CNN, which includes not just the flagship American network, but Headline News, CNN International and CNN.com, doubled its profits. “There are not a lot of 27-year-old companies in America that can make that claim,” Mr. Walton said.

All three cable news networks — CNN, Fox News and MSNBC — have enjoyed ratings bumps during the primaries. But CNN is able to brag about something it had not been able to since 2001: it topped Fox News in the prime-time ratings for a single month in the 25 to 54 age category, the group most coveted by advertisers.

In February, CNN attracted an average of 750,000 viewers in that category during prime time, compared with 550,000 for Fox News and 363,000 for MSNBC, according to Nielsen. (Across all age groups Fox News remained No. 1, with an average of 2.2 million viewers in prime time, compared with 2 million for CNN.)

“If you look at the ratings, in 2006 they stopped the bleeding,” said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. “In 2007, that continued, and there was some overall growth at CNN.”

I've been watching CNN quite a bit thoughout this primary season, including some days where I watch the "Ballot Bowl" segments pretty much all day (especially for the weekend primaries, like South Carolina's).

For all of CNN's liberal bias (which is substantial), I appreciate the networks considerable resources, which facilitate large-scale and multifaceted coverage of events.

And not only that, to be perfectly honest, CNN's got a few "Ballot Bowl" hotties who make the coverage simply irresistable (in my book, Suzanne Malveaux and Jessica Yellin are tied for most genuinely smart and attractive schoolboy-crush reporting).

Clinton's Endgame: The Superdelegate Plot

The New York Times reports in a conspiratorial tone that the Clinton camp is "plotting" its campaign endgame, which is to secure enough addtional victories and superdelegate to win the Democratic nomination:

Advisers to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton today began plotting a ground game, advertising budgets and a confidence-brimming outreach strategy in hopes of both scoring a big victory in April’s Pennsylvania primary and accumulating enough superdelegates over time to even the nomination fight against Senator Barack Obama.
Mr. Obama, who had 11 straight primary and caucus victories in February, has enjoyed momentum lately in picking off superdelegates, the party leaders who have a vote in the nomination. Mrs. Clinton and her advisers now believe that with her victories in Texas and Ohio last night, she can convince superdelegates to stand with her after a Pennsylvania victory.

She also believes that a strong showing in Pennsylvania, which has 188 delegates at stake, could set up a powerful one-two punch two weeks later in the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, which have a combined 218 delegates. Her team believes she has an especially good shot at winning Indiana, where the state’s influential Democratic senator, Evan Bayh, a former two-term governor, was one of Mrs. Clinton’s earliest supporters.

The "big question" now among bloggers on both the left and right is whether Democratic primary battles will sink the party this year, either in a riotous August nominating convention or through internecine battles so severe that a victory for either candidate can only by Pyrrhic.

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Revised: Please this comment thread.

Americans Dissatisfied with U.S. Global Position

I'm having a little debate with Gayle from Dragon Lady's Den on the hypothesized representativeness of Barack Obama's lack of patriotism.

Recall my earlier post, where we find more evidence of anti-Americanism in Obama's rhetoric, "Obama: No Pride in Saying "I Am an American" (the debate in the comment thread is here).

Well it turns out, that a huge majority of Americans, in a new Gallup poll, indicates that they are dissatisfied with America's position in the world.

Now, this is obviously not evidence of anti-Americanism, per se: For someone to say they're "dissatisfied" with America's global position is not the same as claiming that young people traveling abroad can't say they're proud to be an American (which is what Obama asserted).

So, to be clear, I'm not claiming this substantiates any larger claim about the generalizability of Obama's lack of pride in country.

Still, personally, such expressions of shame are shocking to me, as it can be argued that such sentiment goes beyond disapproval of a particular administration or set of public polcies to a loathing of the United States itself. If true, that's not a healthy trend for the democracy.

In any case, here's a summary of the Gallup findings:

Americans' view of the United States' position in the world has undergone a complete reversal over the course of the Bush administration. Since February 2001, Americans' dissatisfaction with the country's position in the world has more than doubled.

Public dissatisfaction with the United States' global position was 27% in February 2002, shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It rose to 50% during the pre-Iraq war period in 2003 when the United States was actively lobbying its allies and other countries at the United Nations to support military action against Iraq. It then quickly dipped to 29% at the very beginning of the war in Iraq in March 2003, but has risen steadily since.

Today's 68% dissatisfaction rating is the highest Gallup has recorded on this question, including during the Vietnam War era. At three different points in the 1960s, the public was consistently divided in its responses, with about 44% satisfied and 46% dissatisfied. (See table at the end of this report for exact survey dates and results.)

Note something further here, and this is where we can make a tentative tie between popular dissatisfaction with America to Obama's statement of shame in nation:

Gallup's findings are highly partisan, with almost 9 out of 10 Democrats indicating dissatisfaction with America:

Current attitudes about the United States' global position are highly partisan, with a majority of Republicans (60%) saying they are satisfied with the country's position in the world, and the vast majority of Democrats (85%) saying they are dissatisfied. The ratings of political independents tend to be closer to Democrats' ratings than to those of Republicans.

Although the question is implicitly an evaluation of the nation's leadership, Gallup did not find a similarly strong partisan breach at the end of President Bill Clinton's second term. In May 2000, 78% of Democrats were satisfied with the United States' position in the world, along with 57% of Republicans.

The majority of Democrats were satisfied with the U.S. global position in the first two measures of Bush's presidency -- 69% in February 2001 and 61% in February 2002. However, their satisfaction plunged to 30% by February 2003, rebounded to 50% during the start of the Iraq war, and, beginning in 2004, has not registered more than 26%.

The percentage of Democrats currently satisfied on this measure (13%) is similar to what it was two years ago (18%). At the same time, satisfaction among Republicans has dropped by 15 percentage points, from 75% to 60%.

To be really able to link these two sentiments - dissatisfaction with America and unpatriotic attitudes - we'd need survey data with question items measuring these two notions independently (note that polls do find majorities of Americans as patriotic, Democrats less so than Republicans).

It's just fascinating that much of Obama's shame in nation is driven by expressed disagreements with our current foreign policies and our alleged lack of standing in the world.

These are precisely the same views that Gallup taps into in a second set of questions (on the "diminished perceptions of U.S. global image," which declined after 2003 and the Iraq war).

Americans should not be ashamed of their country. Indeed, we have more reasons to be proud of our nation than in any time in history. We are more prosperous and more welcoming than ever. Women and minorities enjoy more opportunities in American society today than any other time in history (meanwhile, people are so absorbed by the long drawn out Democratic primary that they forget to reflect on how awesome is the fact that we are choosing between a woman or black man to be the next Democratic standard-bearer).

Sure, we are facing some challenging times, especially in the economy and the war (which actually is getting much better), but I don't think this is cause for a decline of love of country.

Barack Obama's getting a reputation as unpatriotic, an inclination which I hope does not rub off on his supporters.

Clinton Shows Obama Can't Win When it Counts

John Heilemann has another penetrating analysis of the Hillary Clinton's campaign, over at New York Magazine: "Obama can’t win when it counts:"

So Hillary Clinton did what she had to do yesterday to earn a tomorrow for her candidacy: She won Ohio (decisively) and Texas (by a hair in the popular vote, though Obama is likely to win the caucus portion of that state’s weird-ass system). It’s true that a few weeks ago, this would have seemed no great feat, so great were HRC’s leads in the opinion polls in both places. But in the face of Barack Obama’s monthlong, twelve-contest winning streak, of being massively outspent on the air and out-organized on the ground, of two debates where she did no better than battle her rival to a draw, of a slow and seemingly inexorable drift of superdelegates (and not just any superdelegates, but John Lewis, for chrissakes) to Obama — in the face of all of that, Hillary’s achievement was inarguably considerable.

There are many explanations for what occurred yesterday, but let’s start by giving credit where it’s due. The Clinton campaign earned these victories....

But it wasn’t just the Clinton campaign that had the hopemonger ducking and weaving. After months of treating Obama with kid gloves, the press — perhaps goaded into action by Hillary’s designated media mau-mauer, Howard Wolfson, perhaps shamed by the scamps at SNL — finally began to treat him for what he was (and still is): the front-runner. His response and that of his campaign were fairly underwhelming. On Rezko, the beginning of whose trial this week guaranteed a new round of grilling, their answers were pat and obfuscatory. On the NAFTA-Canada imbroglio, their explanations were misleading. And when the going got a little tough at a press avail in San Antonio, Obama turned whiny. “C’mon guys,” he moaned as he tried to flee the scene. “I just answered, like, eight questions.”

How much did all this hurt Obama? Hard to say, precisely. But the exit polls suggest that Clinton won handily in both Ohio and Texas among those voters who made up their minds in the last three days — when her attacks were hitting him the hardest. They also suggest, perhaps more worryingly for Obama, that Clinton made headway in reassembling the electoral coalition that had held firm for her through Super-Duper Tuesday. She won solidly in both places among blue-collar workers, those without a college education, women, and the elderly. And in Texas, once again, she kicked his ass among Hispanics, 67-31.

The Obama campaign will say — is already saying, in fact — that all of this matters naught. That the only thing that matters now is delegates. And in a sense, of course, they are correct, as even the Clintonites admit. And here it appears that HRC has done little to dent Obama’s formidable advantage....

But as my friend John Dickerson over at Slate observes, “The Democratic race has now come down to a contest of numbers versus narrative.” The Clinton narrative revolves, most obviously, around the fact that Hillary has won all of the biggest and most important states apart from Illinois, Obama’s home. And her team will employ this narrative vociferously in the days ahead to try to keep the 500 or so as yet undecided superdelegates — a portion of which either side will need to reach the magic 2,025 delegates required to nail down the nomination — from siding with their foe.

On a deeper level, however, the Clinton narrative boils down to a blunter, more primal claim: that, in the end, Obama can’t win when it counts. As a senior Clinton official put it to me in an e-mail very late last night, “Here’s the deal on BHO — no one is ever going to have a better month than his February. If you can’t close the deal after that, when can you?”

The argument is patently, glaringly, ostentatiously, unrepentantly self-serving. But for Democrats who want above all a candidate who can indeed close the deal that matters most — the deal that will go down in November — there’s still a chance, however small, that it’s an argument that could cut ice. Especially if, six weeks hence, Clinton wins again in Pennsylvania.

Hillary got tough when she need to, and Obama slackened at the worse possible time. Momentum's a powerful thing, I always say, but it takes some nurturing to build up steam, especially when you're up against Clinton, who's scratching and clawing all the way to the finish line.

Obama: No Pride in Saying "I Am an American"

I've been saying for weeks that folks need to pay attention to Barack Obama's words (see, for example, "Barack Obama and the Power of Words").

In speech after speech, I keep hearing more stridently oppositional language, opposition not just to the war, but to our very traditions.

Maybe it's just me, but listening to his concession speech in Texas last night left me disturbed. Obama made what I would consider statements of anti-Americanism. Particulary, like his wife, Obama says that Americans today cannot take pride in their country. He yearns for the future day - presumable under an Obama administration - when young Americans traveling abroad can again hold up their heads and announce with pride, "I am an American."

Here's the YouTube of Obama's San Antonio speech. His longing for a time when Americans can be proud again is at 10:05 minutes:

Obama is, without a doubt, a powerful speaker. And while he does come off as short on specifics at times, his lofty rhetoric veers occasionally into very precise - even noxious - territory.

I'm a proud American, and I tell my kids and my students that they can be proud of their country.

This is not some peripheral issue that should get lost in all the debates about the precise scope of coverage under Obama's health insurance proposal, or whether he'd enter negotiations with our sworn enemies.

No, it goes beyond specifics to the fundamental qualities of what we want in our president, an American president.

I want a president who's not afraid to say that the United States will act when the international community won't. I want a president who's not afraid to say that Americans don't shrink from their international repsonsibilities, that they won't abandon nations of the world who look to us for vigorous leadership and commitments in trade, security, and humanitarian assitance.

We've seen this language of shame in nation before - regulary with the antiwar mobs, but more recently with Michelle Obama and her statement that she's not proud of her country.

Well, with Obama's San Antonio speech we don't have to guess whether Michelle's sentiments run in the family. The Illinois Senator suggests that Americans today traveling abroad have to drop their heads down low.

I disagree, and that's not the kind of presidential role model I want for America's youth.

See also my earlier post, "Looking for Substance in a Dangerous Left-Winger."

McCain is Republican Nominee!

Senator John McCain has clinched the Republican presidential nomination. The Los Angeles Times reports:

John McCain swept to victory in four state primaries today, capturing the Republican presidential nomination that just two months ago seemed beyond his reach...

"Thank you. Thank you, Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island," McCain said to supporters gathered in Dallas to help celebrate his securing the nomination. "I am very grateful for the broad support you have given our campaign. And I am very pleased to note that tonight, my friends, we have won enough delegates to claim with confidence, humility and a sense of great responsibility that I will be the Republican nominee for president of the United States."

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, McCain's last challenger for the nomination, dropped out of the race less than half an hour after the final polls closed in El Paso. Addressing his supporters in Irving, Texas, a resigned Huckabee said he called McCain moments earlier to congratulate the Arizona senator and pledged "to do everything possible to unite our party" and to "unite our country so that we can be the best nation we can be."

Flanked by his wife, Janet, Huckabee called McCain "an honorable man" who ran an honorable campaign.

McCain is expected to go to the White House on Wednesday to receive President Bush's endorsement.

Who McCain will face in the general election remained unclear....

Campaigning in Texas, McCain said he was eager to start the fall race against the Democrats. Asked to predict his likely opponent, McCain told reporters at San Antonio's Armadillo Palace that he would await the outcome of the party's nominating fight.

"We will have stark differences," he said, regardless of whom he faces in the fall.

I'll have more commentary later, as I'm going back to the TV to watch the Demcratic returns.

I can say now, though, that I'm so pleased with McCain's triumph. I can remember in December when the cable networks were broadcasting travel videos of McCain lugging his bags through airport terminals, with a lonely look of undeflected determination. Man, I can't forget those images!

I've felt good about McCain's campaign since New Hampshire - that is, I never really doubted his ultimate nomination after the huge Granite State comeback (momentum's a powerful thing). Sure, there were some tense moments, especially around the time of South Carolina and Florida, but when I posted on Robert Novak's essay in January, "McCain is Likely GOP Nominee," I genuinely believed it.

At this point, the longer the Democratic race drags out, the more tickled I'll be!

This week Obama's already faced considerably more scrutiny, and polls are finding McCain not only more experienced, but exponentially so. McCain naturally leads Clinton on defense as well, and contra to Stanley Fish's argument from last night, I don't think Clinton's that much better on national security than is Obama (he's a lightweight, she's a flip-flopper).

Congratulations to John McCain!

Photo Credit: New York Times

McCain Looks to Clinch GOP Nomination

UPDATE: McCain is Republican Nominee!

*********

Elisabeth Bumiller and Michael Cooper report that John McCain's on the verge of securing the Republican presidential nomination:

Senator John McCain, a one-time insurgent whose campaign was all but dead seven months ago, took a big step toward locking up the Republican presidential nomination Tuesday night as he appeared poised to defeat former Gov. Mike Huckabee in the Ohio and Texas Republican primaries, according to projections by television networks and The Associated Press.

Although Mr. McCain had been far ahead in the delegate count and been bestowed with the unofficial title of “likely Republican nominee” since his string of victories on Feb. 5, Tuesday’s results appear to put him within reach of the 1,191 delegates he needs for the nomination. Mr. McCain also won the Vermont primary and is projected to win the Rhode Island primary.

The Associated Press and television networks projected that Mr. McCain won enough delegates to clinch the nomination, but The New York Times has him still short of the mark.

In a sign that his party is now officially rallying around him, Mr. McCain will travel to the White House on Wednesday morning for a formal endorsement by President Bush, a Republican official said Tuesday night.

Even though Mr. Huckabee has not conceded the race to Mr. McCain, Tuesday’s results cleared the way for him to move more aggressively forward with fund-raising, building a national campaign operation and positioning himself as a general election candidate — at a time when the Democrats were fighting among themselves .

Mr. McCain’s advisers said he had a steady schedule of fund-raising through March, in New York, Palm Beach, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Denver.

Mr. McCain also has a weeklong foreign trip planned in March as part of his Senate business, but he will use it to try to promote his foreign policy credentials to voters.

The advisers said the official kick-off of the McCain campaign would be the first week of April, when Mr. McCain is planning to go on what his campaign is a calling a national “bio tour” to reintroduce himself to the country in places that have been important parts of his life: Annapolis, for example, where he graduated from the United States Naval Academy, and Naval Air Station Meridian in Mississippi, where McCain Field is named after Mr. McCain’s grandfather.

I'll have more later, after I watch some of the election returns.

Ecoterrorism Suspected in Seattle New Home Fires

I saw the news of the ecoterrorist arson-fires on cable the other night. The New York Times has the story:

Five luxury homes in a subdivision marketed as “built green” near here were destroyed or severely damaged by fire early Monday, and evidence at the scene suggested the fires might have been started by radical environmentalists who viewed the homes as violating rather than complementing the wooded wetlands in which they were built.

“Built green?” read letters spray-painted onto a bedsheet found hanging on a fence at the site, about 25 miles northeast of Seattle. “Nope Black!

“McMansions + R.C.D.’s r not green,” said the sign, apparently referring to “rural cluster developments,” which advocates say help prevent sprawl by limiting development density in rural areas. The section of the development, called Quinn’s Crossing, has fewer than a dozen lots on a cul-de-sac just off Echo Lake Road, an area where modest older houses and mobile homes are more common.

The message on the sheet was signed with the letters “E.L.F.,” the infamous initials of the Earth Liberation Front, a loosely organized group that has been linked to multiple bold acts of ecoterrorism across the Northwest and elsewhere for two decades. Banners have claimed E.L.F. responsibility for arsons at other housing developments in the region in recent years, and the fires on Monday came as jurors deliberated in a case involving an arson in 2001 at the University of Washington that was linked to E.L.F.

Fred Gutt, a special agent with the F.B.I.’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in Seattle, said of Monday’s fires, “There’s a claim of E.L.F. responsibility and, given that, it’s being investigated as a domestic-terrorism act.”

“But the authenticity of the claims still needs to be borne out,” Mr. Gutt added, noting the elusiveness of the Earth Liberation Front. “There’s no membership rolls. There’s no clubhouse. It’s more of an ideology. They’re organized only to the extent of maybe cells that get together and decide to act on their belief.”

None of the houses were occupied at the time of the fires, and no one was injured.
Neighbors first reported hearing what sounded like gunfire or explosions early Monday, and firefighting authorities on the scene told reporters that the houses appeared to have had multiple fires set.

The fires stunned the builders and real estate agents promoting the development, who had cast it as reflecting the “best practices” of environmentally friendly high-end home construction. They emphasized features like landscaping that requires little water, sidewalks designed to minimize runoff and reused lumber for construction.

The five houses were models built specifically for the 2007 Seattle Street of Dreams tour, their size and price deliberately scaled back, to about 4,500 square feet and around $2 million, to respond to what one builder, Grey Lundberg, said was an increased interest in more subdued and “green” luxury homes.

“This is releasing more carbon into the air than they ever would have by building the houses,” Patti Smith, the listing agent for one house that burned to the ground, said of the fires. “That’s the tragic irony.”

It's tragic, alright, and frankly dumb.

I'm reminded of the ecoterrorist destruction of Hummers at a Southern California car dealership back in 2003.

It's not the Hummers (hybrid cars will not save the planet), it's the lifestyle.

Conspicuous pro-capitalist consumption, you know, in housing, cars, etc., it doesn't matter. The postmodern terrorists will burn them to the ground, damn the facts, and damn the consequences, to property, the environment, you get the picture.

Iraqis Rejecting Islamic Extremism, Bush Doctrine Cited

Abe Greenwald has an awesome post on the implications of events covered in this morning's New York Times story, "Violence Leaves Young Iraqis Doubting Clerics."

Iraq's young radical extremist are renouncing not just terrorist violence, but the nihilist religious doctrines justifying it.

Here's Greenwald:

Question: What is the most extraordinary thing about the following extraordinary sentence?

BAGHDAD — After almost five years of war, many young people in Iraq, exhausted by constant firsthand exposure to the violence of religious extremism, say they have grown disillusioned with religious leaders and skeptical of the faith that they preach.

Answer: It is the lead of a story in today’s New York Times. The paper of record, which for the past few years could accurately be described as a body count with a styles section, is now acknowledging the realization of the most ambitious goal of the Iraq War: the de-radicalization of Muslim citizens. This is, in its way, more important than political reconciliation and even more important than hunting down al Qaeda. This is the long war stuff, the hearts-and-minds stuff.

The goal was to offer freedom as an alternative to extremism; the criticism was that it was a dream; the reality is that it is happening. From the Times:

Such patterns, if lasting, could lead to a weakening of the political power of religious leaders in Iraq. In a nod to those changing tastes, political parties are dropping overt references to religion.

And the revelations don’t end there. Sabrina Tavernise, who wrote the piece, notes that the extent of Iraqis’ wholesale rejection of jihad is unique in the region:

The shift in Iraq runs counter to trends of rising religious practice among young people across much of the Middle East, where religion has replaced nationalism as a unifying ideology.

It is impossible not to infer that the Bush Doctrine and the commitment of the men and women in uniform has facilitated this shift. Far from “creating more terrorists” as the failed cliché goes, the war has helped to nurture an appreciation for liberty among Iraqi youth.

Greenwald's absolutely right to note the epochal nature of this development, and the essential, continuing vindication of the Bush administration's Iraq policy. Greenwald also note the obvious: That these developments will not be recognized by Bush-bashers and America-haters who want nothing more than the U.S. to fail in Iraq. The antiwar forces will spin these developments in the most deranged ways imaginable.

For example, as al Qaeda has resort to even more barbaric tactics than previously imagined (stapping remote-control bombs to mentally-impaired Iraqi women), our nihilist leftists at home praise such developments as "brilliant strategic adaptations" in the fight to kill more and more Americans and Iraqis.

Even as the New York Times piece itself notes that...

Violent struggle against the United States was easy to romanticize at a distance.

“I used to love Osama bin Laden,” proclaimed a 24-year-old Iraqi college student. She was referring to how she felt before the war took hold in her native Baghdad. The Sept. 11, 2001, strike at American supremacy was satisfying, and the deaths abstract.

Now, the student recites the familiar complaints: Her college has segregated the security checks; guards told her to stop wearing a revealing skirt; she covers her head for safety.

“Now I hate Islam,” she said, sitting in her family’s unadorned living room in central Baghdad. “Al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army are spreading hatred. People are being killed for nothing.”

...Our nihilist, freedom-hating defeatists explain it all away as a fluke, a rejection of the point that allows the antiwar cadres to blame it all on the occupation.

The antiwar defeatists are the same forces who compared the Taliban's 12 year-old boy terrorists - who inflict beheadings and live-immolations on their hostages - to the Catholic Church's scandals of homosexuality.

Nope, it's all moral relativism. Indeed the U.S. is even worse than our enemies, claim the antiwar types: The Bush administration's is the new Nazi regime.

We're winning in Iraq: The administration sees it, the military sees it, the American people see it, and Iraqis themselves see it - as they increasingly renounce their own religion's fight against the historic forces of freedom.

Yes, that's victory, on the largest scale imaginable.

See more at Memeorandum.

Clinton May Push Past Texas and Ohio

Although polls show that Hillary Clinton has little Democratic voter backing for a push past today's decisive voting (in the event of substantial losses), the Clinton camp has a number of scenarios that might keep the New York Senator in the running.

The Wall Street Journal has the story:

Hillary Clinton faces the judgment of Texas and Ohio voters today in what she and her backers have declared "must win" contests, following 11 straight losses to Barack Obama. The big question: What constitutes a "win"?

If the New York senator gets large majorities of the popular vote in both states, she will clearly keep fighting for the Democratic nomination, at least until the next major primary in Pennsylvania on April 22. If she loses both, she will face tremendous pressure to drop out of the race.

The latest polls suggest, however, that the outcome is likely to be muddier than either of those scenarios. The surveys show Sen. Clinton with a solid, even expanding, lead in Ohio. In Texas, two polls released yesterday, show Sen. Obama with a slight lead, while a third puts Sen. Clinton somewhat ahead. Texas's results will be complicated by separate caucuses held after the primary polls close. Sen. Obama is favored to win the caucuses even if he loses the primary.

Should the senators split the states' contests -- or if Sen. Clinton wins, but only by narrow margins -- the debate will turn to how to interpret the results. Two smaller states, Rhode Island and Vermont, also vote today. Clinton aides have started to imply that even just one big win today would allow her to claim she had broken Sen. Obama's momentum, justifying a continuing competition.

If the outcomes are as close as polls suggest, Sen. Clinton won't be able to cut into Sen. Obama's lead in delegates to the Democrats' August nominating convention. The more likely net result from the four states is that his edge will grow. The Illinois senator currently is ahead with 1,386 delegates to 1,276 for Sen. Clinton, as calculated by the Associated Press. A candidate needs 2,025 to secure the nomination.

It is possible Clinton could win, depending on turnout, the accuracy of polling predictions, and the potential electoral fallout to Obama from the last minute scrutiny he's received in the press.

See also, "Stay or Go? Results Today Dictate Clinton's Future."

Obama Lacks Experience for Highest Office, Poll Finds

A new Gallup survey finds the public divided on Barack Obama experience:

The most recent USA Today/Gallup poll finds 46% of Americans saying Barack Obama has the experience necessary to be president, and 46% saying he does not.

The Feb. 21-24 poll finds a sharp contrast between these attitudes about the three-year senator from Illinois and views of his rivals for the presidency -- Washington veterans John McCain and Hillary Clinton. Seventy percent of Americans believe McCain has the necessary experience to be president, slightly more than say this about Clinton (65%).

When Americans are asked to choose among the three candidates the one most ready to be president based on his or her experience, McCain wins more decisively, with Obama a distant third.

McCain's advantage on this dimension is not entirely because Clinton and Obama "split" the Democratic vote, so to speak. McCain dominates among Republicans as expected, but he also leads by a wide margin among independents. A majority of Democrats say Clinton is most ready to be president, with Obama and McCain closely matched for second.

The expected party differences occur when Americans are asked to rate each candidate individually on having the necessary experience to be president. The party gaps are most evident for Clinton, with 85% of Democrats saying she has the necessary experience but only 33% of Republicans agreeing. A majority of all three major party groups think McCain has sufficient experience. Democrats are about as likely to say Obama has the necessary experience as to say this about McCain.

While experience is often an important entry on a candidate's résumé, it may not be what voters are most looking for this year. When asked which of three candidate characteristics is most important to their 2008 vote, only 22% of Americans say experience. Thirty-four percent say the candidate's issue positions, and the most, 42%, say the candidate's leadership skills and vision.

These importance ratings show mild variation by party. Democrats choose leadership skills and vision by a wide margin over both issue positions and experience, something clearly working in Obama's favor. Independents choose leadership by a slim margin over issue positions, and Republicans' preferences are almost evenly divided between issue positions and leadership.

Implications

Obama's relative lack of experience has been an issue in the presidential campaign to date, and it could become a bigger issue if he were McCain's Democratic opponent in the general election. As many Americans believe Obama, the three-year U.S. senator, lacks the experience needed to be president as believe he possesses it. However, experience does not seem to be very high on Americans' list of qualifications for the next president, so this apparent weakness for Obama may not be fatal. Americans are more likely to be looking for a candidate with leadership skills and vision, characteristics on which Obama has obvious strengths.

There's a lot of concern over national security credentials in these findings, seeing how the public rates McCain's experience over both the Democratic candidates.

Things always tighten in the general election of course, so it's important to realize the importance of the campaign itself in bringing into focus each candidate's qualifications for office.

That said, I think Obama's highly vulnerable on this issue, especially as it plays into America's commitment to Iraq and the larger war on terror.

See also, "No Preference? McCain-Obama Matchup Would Be Better."

Stay or Go? Results Today Dictate Clinton's Future

A new ABC News poll shows Democrats backing Hillary Clinton's continuance in the race if she takes either Texas or Ohio today, but if not, well, adios amigo:

Democrats by more than a 2-1 margin say Hillary Clinton should stay in the presidential race even if she loses either the Texas or Ohio primary on Tuesday. But if she fails in both, fewer than half say they'd want her to fight on.

Many, in that case, have another idea for Clinton: the vice presidency.

The lead overall is now Barack Obama's. With his string of 11 consecutive primary and caucus victories, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents by a 50-43 percent margin would like to see him nominated. That's a remarkable reversal: Clinton held a vast lead in ABC News/Washington Post polls before the Iowa caucuses. Campaigns clearly matter.

Despite the overall preference for Obama, Democrats by a very wide 67-29 percent say Clinton should stay in the race even if she loses either Texas or Ohio. But if she were to lose both, far fewer say they'd want her to continue – 45 percent, with 51 percent saying otherwise.

Prospective attitudes, of course, can shift with events -- as vote preferences themselves have shown. At the same time, some within the Clinton campaign, as well as other Democrats, have described Ohio and Texas as must-wins.

Hillary for vice-president? I don't know if she'll like that. She'd be 70 at the end of a second Obama administration, and if she looks old and haggard sometimes now, just wait until 2016!

Besides, Obama's smart enough not to want a co-vice-presidency (you get two-for-the-price of one with the Clintons).

McCain Can Clinch Nomination Tuesday

CNN reports that John McCain could clinch the GOP presidential nomination tomorrow:

Sen. John McCain could clinch the Republican presidential nomination Tuesday, but Mike Huckabee refuses to call it quits.

McCain is 144 delegates shy of sealing the nomination, and 256 Republican delegates are up for grabs Tuesday.

The biggest prizes are Ohio and Texas, where polls show McCain with a comfortable lead. Rhode Island and Vermont also hold contests Tuesday.

Huckabee told reporters the future of his campaign is a fair question if he doesn't take Texas, but he says he believes he has a chance. In Texas, there are 137 delegates at stake.

It would be theoretically possible, but not likely for Huckabee to play spoiler Tuesday, according to CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider.

"If Huckabee were to win the four states by huge margins, he might be able to prevent McCain from going over the top," Schneider said. "But he'd have to win by pretty solid margins."
Vermont is the only winner-take-all state up for grabs Tuesday, and it has only 17 Republican delegates at stake.

Still, Huckabee says he's staying in the race to help the Republican Party stay true to its core values.

"I do think that many people need to be looking at the future of our party. If we're not reaching out to younger voters, if we're not capturing the issues that people care about ... then we're going to be an extinct party in another few years," Huckabee said on CNN's "American Morning."

Huckabee trails McCain by nearly 800 delegates.

I'm still not 100 percent sure what Huckabee wants.

A McCain-Huckabee ticket is not discussed much, although the way Huck's stormed some of the Southern states, it can't be completely ruled out (and I think Huck would way more credible than Mitt Romney for vice-president). (Note too that Minnesota's Tim Pawlenty is considered out of the running for McCain's second spot.)

In any case, there's not too much doubt McCain will wrap it up tomorrow. That's good. The party can finally start rallying all its constituencies together, moving on toward the general election.

Rush Limbaugh (and not to mention Laura Ingraham) will finally have to put up or shut up. He's worn out his calls for GOP crossover voting for Hillary.

No Preference? McCain-Obama Matchup Would Be Better

I've looked for the links unsuccessfully (this is all I could find), but John McCain said today he has no preference between Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama as his general election opponent in the fall.

But which candidate would really be better for McCain?

Stanley Fish at the New York Times offers his handicap:

If it is McCain vs. Obama in the general election, look for something to happen that was unthinkable only a short time ago. The Iraq War will become a Republican plus.
The reason is that McCain’s position on the war, as on so many other issues, looks in (at least) two directions.

On the one hand, he voted to authorize the invasion. On the other, he consistently disagreed with the administration’s prosecution of the war in general and with the judgment of defense Secretary Rumsfeld in particular. And on the third hand, he advocated for a course of action that was at last implemented in the so-called “surge,” and with some success.

So, at any moment, he would be able to present himself as a strong patriot, and at another moment as a critic of the hard-line hawks, and at still another as a hard-line hawk with more experience and military knowledge than the others. And, depending on which position he was occupying, he could deny that he was an uncritical supporter of the war or that he was inattentive to the needs of the troops, or that he had nothing positive to offer.

Meanwhile, as McCain was nimbly moving around, Obama would be standing still, stuck in the one-note posture he has assumed from the beginning of the campaign. In the democratic primaries and caucuses, Obama’s strong suit – the club he used to beat up Hillary Clinton – has been the absolute consistency of his position on the war: he would have voted against it had he been in the senate at the time; he has spoken out against it repeatedly since becoming a senator; and he has promised to end it and bring the troops home within a short time.

But once McCain, and not Clinton, is his opponent, that position becomes a liability, because it can be attacked as being inflexible and without nuance. McCain can ask, Don’t you see that the situation has changed in recent months, and shouldn’t a responsible leader adjust his or her stance according to the facts on the ground? And he can add, I too had my doubts about the conduct of the war, but now a policy I long advocated has been put in place with good results. Moreover, by saying something like that he would be reminding the electorate that he knows how to think tactically about military strategies, while his opponent’s only experience in combat has been trying to figure out how to beat Alan Keyes in the Illinois senate race, something anyone with the letter D (for Democrat) after his name would have been able to do easily.

Up till now, Obama has had a free ride on the Iraq War issue because Senator Clinton has been on the defensive since the campaign began. In her desire to avoid copping to a failure of judgment and apologizing for it (as John Edwards did), she came up with an explanation – I voted to authorize the use of force, but I wasn’t voting for it be actually used – that raised new questions about her credibility and made her vulnerable to the charge that her subsequent anti-war position had been adopted more out of political expediency than conviction.

Like McCain, Clinton tells a complex story about her relationship to the war, but unlike McCain. she tells a story whose parts pull against one another, and she has been caught in a cul-de-sac between them.

The parts of McCain’s story, even with one or two twists and turns, fit nicely into a coherent narrative that brings credit to him in every chapter. I was resolute in the beginning, I demurred for a while but for good reasons, and now I am resolute again, and you can trust me because, in this area especially, I know what I’m doing. He can rehearse this narrative without apologizing for anything and then turn around to Obama and (borrowing from Clinton’s attacks on him), declare: You, on the other hand, don’t know what you’re doing, as everything you say, not only about the war, but about the conduct of foreign policy, proves. (He and President Bush are already pushing this line in anticipation of Obama’s nomination.)

Indeed, every criticism Clinton has made of Obama – he lacks experience, he is all flourish and no substance, he gives shoot-from-the-hip answers to serious questions – falls into McCain’s lap, ready for instant use in the general election.

But, unfortunately for Obama, the reverse is not true. The criticisms of McCain made by his primary opponents – he twice voted against Bush’s tax cuts, he cooperated with Ted Kennedy on immigration reform and with Russ Feingold on campaign-finance reform, he said that waterboarding was torture and should not be used, he scorned fundamentalist Christian leaders, he supported stem cell research, he opposed a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage, he expressed doubts about Samuel Alito – cannot be appropriated by Obama because these are his positions, too.

With the Iraq War either neutralized or migrating to McCain’s side, and with the sharp distinction on social issues blurred by McCain’s heterodoxy (called apostasy by his critics from the right), Obama is left with health care (he would probably get the better of that one) and with the economy where there is in fact a genuine opposition between a firm free-trader and tax-cutter on the one hand, and a critic of Nafta whose economic policies might have the effect of raising taxes on the other. But that is a contrast that might not play too well in a general election campaign that lasts less than two months.

And Obama will not even be able to saddle McCain with the legacy of an unpopular administration, given that more often than not he has been viewed as a Bush opponent, except on the war, and on that issue his loyalty to the president’s policy will do him harm only with those hard-core liberals who would never vote for a Republican anyway.

With Obama as his opponent, McCain has the advantage every which way. He continues to get mileage out of the straight-talk express, and at the same time he also has the political flexibility that comes along with having taken a few detours along the way, and talked out of several sides of his mouth.

Things could change, of course (and Fish provides some flourish on his essay to that effect), but I think McCain will also have a winning issue in Iraq if Hillary winds up winning the nomination.

It's not completely a long shot for her, surprisingly.

McCain's Economic Plan

Today's Wall Street Journal offers a front-page perspective on John McCain's economic agenda:

Imagining how John McCain, the Navy war hero, would play the role of commander in chief has been easy. Imagining how John McCain, the policy maverick, would lead as chief executive of the U.S. economy has been tougher.

In a wide-ranging interview last week, Sen. McCain offered the most-detailed account to date of his thinking on economic issues.

The all-but-certain Republican presidential nominee cast himself as a defender of the Bush tax cuts he voted against, but added caveats to a "no new taxes" vow he made on a Sunday television talk show two weeks ago.

On Social Security, the Arizona senator says he still backs a system of private retirement accounts that President Bush pushed unsuccessfully, and disowned details of a Social Security proposal on his campaign Web site.

Sen. McCain said the Federal Reserve should cut interest rates now to bolster the economy, but added that as president, he couldn't be so explicit on monetary policy. "Presidents have to be careful so they're not perceived as putting undue political pressure on the Fed," he said. "So I would certainly be more careful than I am today."

With the U.S. economy softening, he said he might have "a couple of fireside chats with the American people because of what we see in the [consumer] confidence barometers." But he added that the most potent economic stimulus would be to assure Americans that taxes won't go up in the future and to "call for a meaningful -- and I mean meaningful -- approach to simplifying the tax code so that it's fairer and flatter."

Those who know him well expect that a McCain presidency would be hard to categorize -- a conservative populist who acts by instinct rather than economic ideology. For businesses, that could make him hard to predict; for opponents, hard to pin down. In his 25 years in Congress, the Arizona senator has defined himself on economic issues more by his adversaries than by overarching economic principle.

Even if McCain adds a dose or two of populism here and there, his plan boasts enough bedrock conservative economic elements to satisfy the GOP's anti-tax base.

Economics is not the Arizona Senator's forte, but compared to the $100s of billions in new spending the Democrats are proposing - at a time of considerable worry over deficits - I think McCain will be just fine running head-to-head against his eventual opponent's left-wing economic agenda.

Schadenfreude in the Telecom Immunity Victory

Well, the partisan battle over telecom immunity is near an end, according to this New York Times piece, "Deal Close on Wiretap Law, a Top Democrat Tells CNN."

I haven't payed all that much attention to it, only to the extent that I've seen whacked-out hard-left blogger Glenn Greenwall getting worked up into an outrageous lather over the whole deal. To read Greenwald is to get the feeling that I should be expecting the "knock in the night" when I hit the hay every evening. This Bush administration is awful, I think...man, those Soviet Refuseniks never had it so rough!

In any case, Michael Goldfarb puts this all in perspective, especially this rowdy Greenwald smackdown in need of wide distribution:

The government shows up at your office just days after the 9/11 attack and asks for your help in the war on terror. What are you going to do? According to Glenn Greenwald, you should call a lawyer (isn't that always what the lawyers say). But telecom executives did the only thing they could do--assist the government in whatever way possible. I doubt any of them even had a moment of doubt in complying with the government's request--worst case, the NSA captures a call from some innocent, naturalized American talking to his al Qaeda-affiliated cousin in Paktia, not exactly an ethical minefield.

But the industry now faces as much as $7.243 trillion in liability, as practically every telephone customer in North America is to be considered a victim of this dastardly operation. After months of demagoguing the issue, the Dems in Congress are finally going to cave and grant the firms immunity from lawsuits that are not only frivolous, but a threat to national security.

Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald, who's devoted the last three months of his life to this issue, is despondent:

There's very little point anymore in writing about how the Congressional Democratic leadership is complicit in all of the worst Bush abuses, or about how craven they are. All of that is far too documented and established at this point to be worth spending any time discussing. They were never going to take a stand against warrantless eavesdropping or the destruction of the rule of law via telecom amnesty for one simple reason: many of them don't actually oppose those things, and many who claim to oppose them don't actually care about any of it. That's all a given.

But what is somewhat baffling in all of this is just how politically stupid and self-destructive their behavior is. If the plan all along was to give Bush everything he wanted, as it obviously was, why not just do it at the beginning? Instead, they picked a very dramatic fight that received substantial media attention. They exposed their freshmen and other swing-district members to attack ads. They caused their base and their allies to spend substantial energy and resources defending them from these attacks.

And to think of all the other things Glenn Greenwald could have not achieved over the last few months were his energy and resources devoted to other hopeless crusades!

I've administered a Greenwald smackdown a bit here and there myself, but this Goldfarb piece is pure schadenfreude.